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Part II: Writing and Submitting Your Manuscript

Become a Slave to Style

Understanding Your Disciplinary Style

Writing styles and standards differ across disciplines. Before you start writing your manuscript, become familiar with the style manual for your discipline.

The Web site for Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) contains a comprehensive list of style manuals and guides for different disciplines. For each guide, the site includes the full citation for the resource as well as links to its official website and any explanatory websites.

As an example, Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers,6 provides advice for styling and formatting scientific papers, journals, and books for publication. Its editors offer two methods for citing and documenting sources: the citation-sequence system and the name-year system. The latest edition of the manual addresses the responsibilities of authors, editors, and peer reviewers in scientific publication and also discusses copyright requirements and practices.

6 Council of Science Editors, Style Manual Committee, Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 7th ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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